Modesty and Lust and an Open Letter Revisited

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Modesty is a cruel bludgeon, something of which I was reminded by this very fine post from Lauren Nicole: Modesty, Lust, and Emotional Rape. Lauren is a Christian, and she writes for Christian audiences (as I have done many times). Her orientation may be evangelical, but she’s right on the money when it comes to identifying the problem:

Dear men: If you believe my neckline is causing to stumble, you have bought into the lie that women are the problem, NOT YOUR LUST.

Whether “lust” is a sin is a theological question. But whether men — religious or otherwise — ever get to hold women responsible for their arousal is a psychological as well as a religious one. And the answer, as I’ve written before, is always no.

So below is a post originally inspired by Rachel Hills. Here was her question that led to this open letter to a 16 year-old girl:

Dear Rachel,

I wish that I could offer you specific fashion tips that would guarantee that creepy older guys wouldn’t hit on you. For that matter, I wish I could share with you how to dress in a manner that would assure that your peers wouldn’t frequently judge you, either to your face or behind your back. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to ensure those things — because the sad truth is that no matter how you dress, no matter what you wear, you will be perceived by some men as a target for their unwanted advances.

You may have heard people say things like “girls who wear short skirts are asking for ‘it’”. By “it” they may mean anything from rape to crude comments and penetrating stares. But as you may already have noticed, girls aren’t immune from harassment when they’re wearing simple or “modest” garb either. I’ve had plenty of students who’ve been accosted while wearing sweatpants or long dresses. I’ve had Muslim students who chose to wear head coverings, and they’ve been harassed both religiously and sexually. The bottom line is that there’s nothing you can wear that will guarantee respect from others. And the reason is that the root of this problem isn’t skin or clothing, it’s our cultural contempt for women and girls.

Have you noticed the way this works yet? If a girl is thin, she’s accused of being “anorexic”; if her weight is higher than the cruelly restrictive ideal, she’s “fat” and “doesn’t take care of herself” or “has no self-control.” If she wears cute, trendy clothes she “only wants attention” and if she wears sweats and jeans, she “doesn’t make an effort.” If she’s perceived as sexually attractive, and — especially — if she shows her own sexual side, she’s likely to be called a “slut.” If her sexuality and her body are concealed, she’s a “prude.” As you’ve probably figured out, the cards are stacked against you. You cannot win, at least not if you define winning as dressing and behaving in a way likely to win approval (or at least decent respect) from everyone.

The advice I’m going to give may sound clichéd, but it’s important nonetheless: you should dress in a style that makes you comfortable.

Comfort, of course, has many dimensions. There’s physical comfort to consider. A fashion choice that leaves you sweating and itchy on a hot day, or shivering on a cold one, is by definition uncomfortable. When the weather’s warm, wearing more revealing clothing is often as much a matter of comfort rather than style.

Of course, there’s a psychological aspect to comfort, too. The more revealing your clothing (regardless of your reasons for wearing it), the more of your body others can see. It’s important to be honest with yourself about how that makes you feel. Different people have different levels of comfort with having their bodies noticed. That’s a normal variation, and the key thing is to be aware where you are on the spectrum. If your peers or parents urge you to dress in a style that leaves you feeling vulnerable and uncomfortably exposed, you have a right to push back against them. The reverse is true, too.

It’s important too to note that however much skin you are revealing, you are never responsible for another person’s inappropriate behavior. Save for the blind, we are all visual people. We notice each other. There is no right not to be seen. But there is a right not to be stared at with a penetrating gaze of the sort that makes you feel deeply uncomfortable. While it may seem that you get those leers more often when you’re showing more skin, you’ve probably noticed that you get those creepy stares at other times as well. And the key thing you need to know is that men can control their eyes — they really can — and women can control their judgment. Your body is not so powerful that it can drive others to distraction. (And yes, if we’re honest, sometimes we wish that our bodies were that powerful, particularly if it meant drawing the attention of someone to whom we are attracted!) If some men choose to be distracted by you, that is their choice, a decision for which they (not you) are solely responsible. No matter what anyone tells you, you need to remember that.

It is not inconsistent to want to be seen and not be stared at. You know the difference, I suspect, between an “appreciative look” (which can feel very validating) and the “penetrating stare” that leaves you feeling like crawling into a hole. While people are not required to give you the former, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to avoid giving you the latter. It’s also not unreasonable to want guys your age to be interested in you, and want the creepy old ones to leave you alone. Remember, it’s not hypocrisy or naiveté on your part to dress in a way that you hope will get you that positive attention you want without also bringing the negative attention you fear and loathe.

Sometimes, of course, we need other people’s insight and advice. There are little fashion rules that it can be helpful to know (even if only for the sake of breaking them, like the old one about not mixing browns and blacks, or not wearing dark-colored bras under light-colored tops.) Friends and family members may have suggestions for what colors or styles are most flattering to you, and sometimes those suggestions may be helpful. I’m certainly not suggesting you shouldn’t listen to those tips. But I want you to know there’s a world of difference between saying “you know, I think lime green isn’t really your color” and saying “you shouldn’t wear short skirts, because then men will think you’re easy.” The former bit of advice is rooted in an aesthetic truth (aesthetics is a fancy term for the study of what is beautiful or good), the latter in an anxiety that is based on a false assumption about male weakness.

It’s okay to ask, when headed to a new school or a workplace or a party, about the dress code. Few of us want to stand out as totally different from everyone else. Most of us can figure out that what you wear to a birthday party at the water park is different from what you would wear to a funeral service in a church. Dressing for the occasion is part of living in a community with others. But that standard should still have room for a lot of flexibility. A bikini is probably not appropriate at Thanksgiving dinner (unless you’re poolside), but when it comes, say, to school, don’t let anyone tell you that can’t dress up (or down) depending on how you feel.

Here’s a key point: As a father and a teacher and a youth leader and a feminist man who has been around a while (and worked with thousands of young people), I want you to know that while not all men are safe and trustworthy, men’s bad behavior is never, ever, ever, ever, ever “your” fault. Your miniskirt doesn’t cause guys (of any age) to do anything they don’t choose to do (no matter what they say to the contrary). It’s not your job to dress to keep yourself safe from men.

Lastly, let me say that finding your own style is an adventure. It involves a lot of trial, and some not infrequent errors. I promise you, ten or twenty years from now you’ll look at photos of yourself at 16, roll your eyes, and say “What was I wearing? What made me think that looked good?” Despite what some folks tell you, these are not the best years of your life. Not even close. And in terms of your style and your beauty, you aren’t anywhere near your peak. I say that not to belittle you, but to reassure you that you don’t have to get it right yet. You have much more time than you think.

All the very best,

Hugo

Of teen sex and suitcases

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On this Shrove Tuesday, we start the new term at Pasadena City College with painful cutbacks.

One of my colleagues (who as far as I know has been unaware of the controversy surrounding me) greeted me in the office this morning and said “Good morning, Hugo! You look like you’ve aged ten years.”

But all is well regardless. I’ve got a piece up at Role/Reboot this morning: Teens, Sex, and the Suitcase Rule. Inspired by Amy Schalet’s wonderful Not Under My Roof, the post looks at different attitudes towards teen sex, including my own family’s particular approach to the issue. Excerpt:

American parents, Schalet claims, use a strategy of “connection through control.” By imposing rules (curfews, blanket prohibitions on pre-marital sex), parents seek to demonstrate love and to maintain a vigilant presence in their children’s lives. Parents in the United States pursue connection through control even when they know it won’t work; the American adults Schalet interviewed were often pessimistic about their own ability to regulate their adolescent children’s behavior. Contemporary parents often assume that their kids will have sex anyway; they describe their own efforts as “swimming against the tide.” But because American parents tend to see teenagers as fundamentally irresponsible, they often believe that they have no choice but to continue to do whatever they can to regulate their teens’ private lives, even if they doubt the efficacy of the strategy.

In the Netherlands, according to Schalet, parents also want to protect their teens. But their technique is the reverse: “control through connection.” Like American adults, Dutch mothers and fathers believe adolescent sexual experimentation is inevitable. But rather than grimly soldiering on in the effort to repress teen exploration like their American counterparts, many Dutch parents seek to integrate teen sexual discovery into family life. Teens are expected to bring their boyfriends and girlfriends home to meet the relatives and to participate in family activities. Sons and daughters are encouraged to integrate their romantic lives into communal domestic routines. In due course, typical Dutch families will permit their teenage children to invite boyfriends or girlfriends to spend the night. Unlike in my family, the luggage and the bodies all sleep in the same bedroom. Sexual discovery is private, but it’s also sanctioned. The end result is, Dutch parents hope, a safer and happier experience for their children.

A Friday Update on the Controversy

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It’s been two months since the controversy over my past erupted in the blogosphere. The debate surrounding me has become bigger than I (or anyone I know) could have imagined. This week’s article in The Atlantic reignited the discussion, and has led to a new round of blogposts. Four for which I am personally grateful are here and here and here and here. I am also sincerely appreciative of posts which have been less friendly but no less thoughtful, such as this one.

Lawyers have done for me what I couldn’t do for myself: forced me to stop writing about the most controversial aspects of my situation. I’m not able to discuss publicly the nature of the legal injunction that bars me from speaking further about my pre-sobriety past, but can say that I am not currently under criminal investigation nor am I engaged in any civil litigation.

I can also say that silence on these matters is personally as well as legally necessary. This whole business has exacted a tremendous toll on my family and my friends. In order to prioritize my sobriety, and in order to remain the best husband, father, friend, son, brother and mentor I can be, I’ve needed to stay out of many of the most heated public discussions of my life, my writing, and my role in feminist community. It has been an extraordinarily painful and challenging time; I’ve lost many friends who have — for a host of reasons I won’t question — found it impossible to remain in relationship with me as a result of what they’ve learned about my history. Worse still has been seeing the pain that this has caused loved ones who are fiercely protective of me. By staying out of these debates, I’ve hoped to calm things for their sakes.

I remain convinced, as I wrote last month, that withdrawing from explicitly feminist spaces remains the best course of action. In the past, I have centered myself — or allowed myself to be centered — too often in those forums. While I do think that there is a role for men in feminism; it isn’t clear to me that someone with my past is a good candidate to take such a role. I believe in feminism today just as passionately as I did two months ago; indeed, the tools I learned in feminist community have helped me tremendously throughout this painful time. But it’s one thing to believe in feminism — and another altogether to be one of the better-known male faces of the movement.

I’m still listening to voices on all sides of this debate; some want me to continue to do public feminist work, some don’t. (The number of emails I get daily has fallen considerably, but I’m still getting 15-20 messages a day, evenly divided between the supportive and the condemnatory.) The voices I’m closest to remind me that it’s still too soon to make long-term decisions about the shape of my career. Though these last two months have seemed interminable, not enough time has passed for complete clarity to arrive. So things will remain in flux a little while longer.

As difficult as this controversy has been personally and professionally, I’m grateful for it. It has forced me to confront aspects of my personal and public privilege I hadn’t fully considered before; it has forced me to take responsibility for my cavalier attitude towards telling other people’s stories. It is an opportunity to grow, and I don’t want to squander it. Part of ensuring that this chance isn’t wasted is taking more time to reflect, to listen, and to say “thank you” over and over again.

Your Cleavage is Harassing Me, and Other Dumb Ideas about Male Weakness

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My Genderal Interest column today looks at the risible claim made by many men’s rights activists that scantily-clad women are sexually harassing men. See Your Cleavage Is Guilty of ‘Biological Sexual Harassment,’ and Other Dumb Ideas. Excerpt:

The traditional arguments for women’s modesty have been that concealing dress was necessary to protect men from lustful thoughts and to protect women from being raped. But Arndt and the MRAs have a different rationale. They’re not offended by skimpy clothing on religious grounds, nor do they all buy into the myth of male weakness that says that bare female skin invariably causes otherwise nice guys to commit sexual assault. Rather, they seem to be arguing that by tempting all straight men while only being willing to sleep with a few, flirtatious or scantily-clad women are engaged in a particularly cruel form of sexualized discrimination. That, the MRAs insist, ought to be seen as sexual harassment.

For Arndt and her ideological fellow travelers, it’s sexually unsuccessful straight men (“betas”) that suffer the most from a culture in which women are free to display their bodies. Asking women to cover up isn’t about protecting purity; for the MRAs it’s about protecting betas from humiliation and from self-esteem-destroying reminders that they can look but never touch the bodies for which they long. All of that pent-up male resentment is women’s fault, Arndt implies, and it is women’s responsibility to consider the soul-scarring cost of the mixed messages their revealing clothing sends.

The kind of particularly male pain that Arndt and her allies describe isn’t rooted in women’s flirtatiousness, sexy clothing, or presumed preference for “alpha” males. Whether they’re genuinely hurting or just petulantly sulking, the confusion and hurt with which men cope is based largely on their own sense of entitlement. The calculus of entitlement works like this: if women don’t want to turn men on, they need to cover up. If they don’t cover up, they’ll turn men on. If they turn men on, women are obligated to do something to assuage that lust. Having turned them on, if women don’t give men what they want, then women are cruel teases who have no right to complain if men lash out in justified rage at being denied what they’ve been taught is rightfully theirs.

Valentine Memories at Role/Reboot

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We’re running a series of Valentine-themed posts over at Role/Reboot today. Check out Clarisse Thorn’s piece and one from Michelle Rabil.

My offering is Valentine’s Day: A Personal History.

Excerpt:

Things got worse in junior high school, even without the compulsory card exchanges. By seventh grade, it was clear that a privileged few had boyfriends and girlfriends; February 14th was now about them and them alone. For most of my teens, I loathed this day, as the absence of my very own “Valentine” just seemed to reinforce my predictably adolescent sense of being uniquely unlovable. (It was only years later that I realized how many of my classmates probably felt exactly the same way.) I remember that once, perhaps when I was 15, Valentine’s Day fell on a weekend, and I was intensely relieved. Of course, the popular couples in my high school simply marked the holiday on the previous Friday, and my sense of alienation and loneliness was as great as ever.

But things changed for me. I got into my first romantic relationship just before Christmas break my senior year of high school. When February 14th rolled around, I leapt enthusiastically into all the rituals I’d both disdained and envied for so long. I bought that first girlfriend a rose and a card, making sure to give them to her right before her first class so she’d be able to display them all day long. I’d joined the ranks of the romantic exhibitionists who make Valentine’s Day insufferable for so many. Participating in public displays of partnered affection can be an especially unkind and especially irresistible way of proving you’ve at last joined the relationship “haves.”

Exile in Girlville? UPDATED

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The Atlantic Magazine’s online edition covers the controversy swirling around me and around the larger issue of men in feminist spaces: Exile in Girlville: How a Male Feminist Alienated His Community (That’s an updated title; check the URL for the original one.)

The quotes from me are accurate. I told the reporter, Raphael Magarik, that I couldn’t discuss my past but was willing to discuss other aspects of the story, and we chatted for over an hour during an interview two weeks ago.

I’ll leave it to others to decide whether they agree with Magarik’s characterization of all of this as a “poignant turn of events.” I link to it only because it’s the closest thing available to a summary of this complicated story.

UPDATE: The new title for Magarik’s piece is Exile in Gal-Ville. It’s not the only article on the controversy and related issues to appear this week; Elissa Strauss has a piece up at Alternet today: Do Men Belong in the Women’s Movement? She quotes Shira Tarrant, Michael Kaufman, Michael Kimmel, and many others in a lengthy and thoughtful examination of the topic.

A weakening of the sexual double standard? On straight men and slutshaming

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Tracy Clark-Flory, who writes so ably about sex and relationships for Salon, has a post up tonight that asks a simple question: can a man be slut-shamed?

Tracy interviewed me and Jaclyn Friedman for the piece, an interesting juxtaposition given recent events in the feminist blogosphere. Had I known what he’s been up to, I would have suggested Tracy also talk to Michael Flood, the great Antipodean pro-feminist who left a nice comment on my Facebook page this evening and shared publicly the abstract of a forthcoming article on Australian men and slutshaming. Here it is, with bold emphasis mine:

Abstract: Sexual and gender relations are in a state of flux in Australia, with both growing gender equality and persistent inequalities, the pornographication of popular culture, and increasing assertions of female sexual agency (Flood 2008). The sexual double standard – the differential judgement and treatment of women’s and men’s sexual behaviour – and the policing of female sexual reputation long have been features of the sexual landscape. However, there is some evidence that these formations are shifting. While “slut” and related terms remain powerful disciplinary mechanisms for regulating women’s sexual behaviour, particularly among young women, such terms also are being subverted and reclaimed. This paper reports on the emergence of a new term in heterosexual sexual relations, the “male slut”. In qualitative interviews in Australia, some young men express a desire to avoid this version of male sexual reputation, one earned through excessive or inappropriate sexual activity. The term “male slut” signals a slight weakening of the sexual double standard and an increased policing of male sexual behaviour.

What Michael’s seeing in Australia I’m also seeing here in Los Angeles, as the cultural tide may be beginning to turn against a cavalier acceptance of male promiscuity. It would be absolutely wrong to claim that we’ve achieved “reputational parity”, where slut-shaming functions in equivalent ways for both men and women. But we’re closer than we were, both because of the acceptance of what Flood calls “increasing assertions of female sexual agency” and an evolving understanding among young guys that there’s more to being a man than sleeping with as many women as possible.

I’m eager to see Michael’s article when it appears. In the meantime, do read Tracy’s.

The Salad Days of Barely Legal Porn at Jezebel

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My Genderal Interest column this week at Jezebel: Why Do Men Love ‘Barely Legal’ Porn? Excerpt:

The extraordinary popularity of the barely legal genre (Flynt couldn’t trademark the catchphrase) raises an obvious question: Why are so many straight adult men so turned on by women at or below the age of consent? The answer for many — across the ideological spectrum — takes some form of an appeal to “nature.” The well-known right-wing columnist John Derbyshire wrote in The National Review in 2005 that “beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman’s salad days are shorter than a man’s — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20.” That half or more of a woman’s sexual “salad days” would pass before she was a legal adult was, for Derbyshire and nearly all of his entirely un-outraged fellow columnists at America’s best-known conservative magazine, just “a sad truth about human life.”

Beyond Derbyshire, the most common explanation given for adult men’s particularly intense attraction to teen girls is reproduction. But on closer scrutiny that theory falls apart. Women’s fertility peaks between 22 and 26, well after their “salad days” have come to a close. Barely and not-yet legal teens alike have statistically higher rates of complications in pregnancy than women in their twenties. From a medical historical perspective, there has never been a time when 17 year-olds were more fertile than women just five or six years older. The argument that men in their 30s, 40s, and beyond are evolutionarily hardwired to lust after girls just above or below the adulthood threshold has less merit than we think.

One alternative answer has much more to do with adult men’s anxiety than with their reproductive longings. In the fantasy world of “barely legal” pornography, the teen girl is an ingénue longing for sexual initiation at the hands and body of an experienced older man. For an older man (the average male porn user is over 30) perhaps intimidated by the erotic and emotional demands of his own female peers, the imagined naïveté of a much-younger woman is a source of comfort. The less experience she has, the less likely she’ll mock his clumsiness and the more likely she’ll appreciate whatever savoir-faire he does possess.

LEGO’s Friends Line Selling Well, but the PR is Komenesque

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I’ve got a short piece up at Jezebel today, looking at the controversy over LEGO’s new “Friends” line for girls. Excerpt:

In the six weeks since Lego launched their controversial (and pink) Friends line aimed at young girls, pushback has been strong. But sales are strong as well, and the company’s response to criticism has been consistently clumsy, exacerbating rather than calming the problem — a problem, of course, that they fail to see. Sales are sales!

Featuring a Butterfly Beauty Shop and a Fashion Designer Workshop, the 14 Friends sets are built around girl-figurines who live in what pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian calls the “pastel-colored, gender-segregated, stereotypically female suburban paradise” of Heartlake City. Taller and curvier than the traditional Lego “mini-figs,” Mia, Emma, Andrea, Stephanie and Olivia represent a different species from anything the company has created before.

Lego Friends has also brought an unprecedented degree of criticism for the venerable toy firm, particularly from advocates for women troubled by the way the set reinforces traditional female roles. SPARK, the campaign against the sexualization of girls, sent an open letter to Lego in late January, accusing the company of a “lack of faith… in girls’ skills and interests.” More than 51,000 signatures accompanied the statement.

The article includes links to two great videos from Anita Sarkeesian, better known as the principal force behind Feminist Frequency, home of the web’s premier commentary on pop culture. (Anita is also a terrific web designer, and created this site for me last year.) Here’s part one and here’s part two.

The Masculinity Crisis and the Gender Gap: Why White Men Vote Republican

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My latest at Role/Reboot revisits a ninety year-old story: The Roots of the Modern Gender Gap.

Excerpt:

Conservative Republican appeals to men are filled with nostalgia for an era when women could not afford to be as choosy as they seem to be today. The historian-turned-gadfly-candidate Newt Gingrich rarely misses an opportunity to point out that, since the 1960s, liberals have carefully substituted the state for the husband in the lives of American women. Strong public institutions (as well as contraception and access to abortion) reduced women’s dependency on men. As women gained greater autonomy, they no longer felt as compelled to settle for unhappy or abusive marriages. In the traditionalist imagination, this liberation led to abortion, divorce, and promiscuity.

The end result of women’s emancipation has been, as conservatives like Charles Murray and Mary Eberstadt have argued, the psychological dislocation of American men. Raised to be “good providers,” young men cannot possibly compete with a “Leviathan” state that provides far more to women and children. The much-exaggerated contemporary masculinity crisis is the inevitable consequence of robbing men of their natural and primary source of self-esteem, the ability to provide for their families.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that more men than women vote Republican in this country for this very reason. Whether they are able to articulate it or not, I suspect a great many men sense that the weaker the state, the more dependent women become upon them. The fewer publicly-provided alternatives to getting married exist, the more likely women are to put up with unhappy marriages, and the less likely they are to have any heft with which to demand that men make necessary changes. The stronger the social safety net, the more options women have for raising children without men; those women who do choose to raise children with men will do so by choice rather than necessity. And when you have a choice, you can begin to demand a degree of mutuality and accountability from a partner that you could not otherwise demand. No wonder so many angry men vote Republican, and sing the praises of the “free enterprise” system. No wonder so many more women vote Democratic, or failing that, for the least reactionary Republican available.

Read the whole thing.